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Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Book Excerpt: Nightwatching by @JohnZunski

NIGHTWATCHING by John Zunski

Genre: Horror

Excerpt

At the entrance to town they were greeted by three
dogs lying in the middle of the street. Only after the Escalade came to a stop
did the dogs consider the McAfee’s worthiness. They studied the vehicle a long
moment before standing and letting it pass.

Sondra’s eyes roamed disapprovingly from the trailer
court at the town’s edge to the bungalows, cape cods and an A-frame that lined
the street. Even the nicer ones seemed in disrepair — this one needed a new
roof, that one was in need of a fresh coat of paint, another missing front
steps.

Outside a cinderblock bungalow, an obese man with fat
threatening to roll from beneath his undershirt and over his boxers, sat upon a
rickety metal chair. Smoke bellowed from his mouth and from a cigarette as his
eyes narrowed in consideration of the passing vehicle.

As they rounded a bend, they were greeted by a large
neon sign that stretched from its building across the sidewalk and over the
street. Even though it was a couple blocks away the sign dominated the street.
It too needed repairs, its letters spelled AVERN.

Travis parked in front of the tavern. Sondra’s eyes
roamed from missing pieces of wooden siding on the building’s exterior to the
ancient snowmobile mounted high on its sidewall back to Travis, her mouth
agape.

“Boyd and Chadwick’s,” Travis said.

“You’ve got to be kidding me. This place is a dump.”

“The correct term is a dive.” Travis squeezed her
thigh. “What were you expecting, The Four Seasons?”

Sondra looked from the obnoxious green Rolling Rock
neon in the window to her husband. “Maybe a nice place to enjoy a cocktail.”

“I’m sure they have something to kill the bug that is
lodged up your ass.” Travis stepped out of the Escalade, circled about and
opened her door. “Come on, give it a chance. If you don’t like it we’ll leave
after a drink.”

The soft sound of an acoustic guitar and the echo of a
distant voice spurned her from the passenger seat. Her heels clacked across the
concrete sidewalk and up the cracked two steps of the bar.

A felling wedge propped the front door open as Sondra
paused in the doorway to peer inside. Cigarette smoke floated across the bar
like predawn fog. A figure in a flannel shirt and baseball cap was hunched over
his guitar while working a voice smoothed by fine sandpaper. Above him neon lights
burned in appreciation. Sondra swooned.

Catching herself, she slipped her hand into Travis’s
as they quietly made their way to the end of the nearly empty bar.

If water could cry it would sound like this, Sondra
thought. The words flowed from the guitarist’s mouth as naturally as water
flows down stream. His lyrics caressed her ears: “To kiss the lips I miss…
Through flames I pray in vain… in misery I long for her breath… Till I find
you, heartbreak’s my only companion…I dream of your touch with longing and
pain, longing and pain.”

When he finished, the musician reached out and took a
long sip from his drink as the only other patron intoned a long: “Yes… yes!”
The bartender clapped.

“Berlin’s always longing for pain,” the barkeep
declared.

“Yeah man,” the patron said through a tobacco-stained
beard that hung halfway to his chest. “That’s why I was married seven times.”

Sondra watched the man take a long drag on a hand
rolled cigarette, his expression pure ecstasy. In Seattle she would have
crossed the street to avoid someone similar.

“What can I get you folks?” the bartender asked as he
flipped coasters in front of Sondra and Travis.

“Strawberry Martini, extra dry with a twist,” Sondra
replied.

“The same,” Travis said.

The bartender hobbled to the beer cooler, produced two
bottles of Bud and then poured two shots of bourbon and sat them before the
couple.

“What’s this?” Sondra asked.

“Ghetto in the Meadow Martini, extra twisted. That’ll
be nine dollars for both. If you don’t mind. Trey here,” the bartender pointed
to the musician, “is waiting to play.”

Amused, Travis threw a twenty dollar bill on the bar
and watched the bartender make change.

Sondra nudged him, her gaze asking: You’re going to
allow this?

Travis shrugged and sipped his beer.

The bartender returned to his seat as Trey struck the
first chord of the saddest song Sondra ever heard. With each note, tears
gathered on the guitar strings. Wherever the musician’s fingers touched,
another tear formed and soon they began to fall, forming a waterfall that fed
an invisible lake around the guitarist’s barstool.

Sondra reached for the shot glass and brought it to
her lips. Sweet bitterness exploded in her mouth, sending an electrical charge
to parts of her body she’d long thought dead. She gasped as her throat burned.
Real tears formed in her eyes.

The musician swung about, facing her. Though his head
was down, his eyes studying the frets, she felt as if he were staring at her
through the brim of his cap.

Overcome, she sat back in the barstool and closed her
eyes, each sad note telling a story she longed to hear. On the cusp of
understanding, the moment just before figuring everything out, the guitar
stopped crying, the waterfall’s faucet creaked shut and the lake evaporated
into a desert of peanut shells and dirt.

The claps of the others summoned her and she opened
her eyes only to meet the guitarist’s stare. Even if she wanted to, she
couldn’t avert his gaze.

After a moment he broke his stare, slammed down his
shot, packed his guitar in its case and floated out the door without a word.